


"Calling up at the sky"

by Creamteasforever



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Childhood, Dark, Fatlock, M/M, Pastoral, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:33:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2063034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creamteasforever/pseuds/Creamteasforever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moriarty didn’t murder Carl Powers. </p><p>Somebody else did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Calling up at the sky"

**Author's Note:**

> Dark Sheriarty fic, set in a far different version of their youth. 
> 
> Enjoy.

It begins in Yorkshire, as children. The Holmes are old, landed gentry, of a breed going out of fashion a hundred years before and an utter anachronism these days, but Sherlock’s father clings to his line’s traditions, with the stubbornness of the Knight of the Woeful Countenance. He impresses the need for duty, the import of preservation and history, upon his offspring in long, zealous lectures, broken up by tasks aplenty. Mycroft listens gravely, seems to take it all to heart, though he has a lazy streak and would rather plan than perform. Sherlock rebels, purely from what he knows to be the expression of his own perverse, questioning personality; there is due punishment for his impertinence in making light of it all, in his asking for the why as well as the how, in his fascination for the things of this century and not those of a half-millennium previous. Their lonely house is far from town, set deep in its own fields, too far for anyone to hear the screams of a tortured child. Slowly he learns to hide his emotions, to do what is required of him, to keep a calm and passionless exterior.

In one of the library’s newer dictionaries, Edwardian rather than Georgian, he learns the definition of “psychopath”. He wishes he was one.

This ambition would come as a surprise to Sherrinford Holmes, who for all his harshness is not incapable of the more tender passions; he is a man who always tended towards the withdrawn, and his two boys are irreplaceable hopes for the future now (their mother now forgotten or dead or gone; an outsider would never know which). But everything best and truest about him is lavished on their land, and the centuries-old country manor - and how Sherrinford Holmes loves his manor, a white elephant of a place that was only reluctantly renovated to be warmed by coal fires instead of wood and is still deathly cold in winters. Sherlock learned his letters under gaslight; reading in bed with a pocket torch, furtively purchased on one of the achingly rare trips to the valleys, smacks not merely of the transgressive but of the downright impious. It does not belong in their milieu. 

Simply maintaining the estate - so vulnerable for all the beauty of the Dales - propping up the house against its slow crumble, is a task that would have kept a staff of servants busily occupied in the old days and more than fills the time of those few mad or impoverished enough to work in such a desolate spot. There is no day that does not require the ever-continuing rituals: polishing cherished silver, cleaning grates, airing unused rooms, as well as the more ordinary farm tasks of mucking and milking (they keep three White Parks and use the bull to plow out their tremendous vegetable garden). Satan would find no idle hands to tempt in this house.

It is therefore not out of keeping with the prevailing philosophy that for Sherlock’s eighth birthday he is offered the choice of a pet, some trainable sheepdog or milk-providing goat, to reward his increasing age with greater responsibility. He has never dared to ask for one before and does not think much of the concept now. Mycroft keeps a large and terrible hunting hound whose bark and appearance has put Sherlock off dogs for life. The barn cats, dutifully murdering unwary grain-stealing mice each morning, give him sly, belittling glances out of the corners of their eyes. While he thinks he could bring up a kitten, there is no real joy to be had there. He would never be allowed to feed it tantalizing morsels off his plate or let it sleep on his antique bedspread (stitched by hand by their grandmother, it perpetually smells of mothballs; Sherlock tolerates it only because of the vague, unspoken romance he half-recalls that the lady in question was French, with a spicy past before she settled down into the most conservative family in England).

Instead he asks for a beehive. There’s nothing to be mocked in the business of keeping profitable insects, nothing to give away his feelings. Mycroft harrumphs and buries himself in a white paper. His father approves stentoriously and even personally ventures away from his much-beloved land (an event worthy of note in itself; it has been years since Sherrinford last left home) to purchase two hives that very day. If the gift is accompanied by a warning that he attend to them, that is only to be expected. Sherlock does so, very carefully. They are his and he intends to look after them well.

And if he goes out sometimes to taste a few stolen drops of honey, to nestle a bee in his hand and feel the downy-scratchy hide of a sleepy nectar-filled worker, it would still be difficult to accuse him of sentiment.

That particular year runs the gamut from good to bad; Sherrinford is tired of tutoring him and enrolls him in the traditional school of old grey stones, just close enough for Sherlock to be a day student (his father didn’t know enough to teach any more, Sherlock thinks; he has already read most of their library and would go faster if he didn’t try to place the contents of each word in his mind, word-perfect; it goes quicker once he reads Cicero’s suggestions on the subject). Mycroft goes there too, now old enough to drive them both to school, and does so willingly enough. Sherlock’s brother quietly disapproves of their country solitude and awaits his departure for university with the impatience of a millenialist waiting for the last trump, though he takes care to hide this from Sherrinford.

It is the trips back and forth which finally bring home to Sherlock just how much of the atmosphere of their house is inspired by his brother, for the same air of patronising scorn, the same impression that he is perpetually erring and walking on eggshells, the frustration of feeling perpetually less intelligent for not knowing enough even with his present prodigial knowledge is if anything more suffocating when the two of them are alone in the tiny Austen. At least on their sprawling estate he can find many places to hide away, some task which needs doing and which his brother will try to avoid. But on the roads, Mycroft drills him on questions and answers, chides him when his memory fails or he mispronounces a word only come across in books. The lengthy drive each day becomes a torment. So kind of his brother to take such an interest, help him at his lessons, everyone would say! He does not even try explaining how much he dreads the back and forth each day, merely suffers through with an anguish all the more real because it is not permitted to be silent. One must pretend appreciation; sullenness is not wise in Mycroft’s company.

Petty, but petty things are the stuff that make up lives.

Between the two authority figures, Sherlock decides he now prefers his father, with the usual liking of a child for the one less closely entangled in the pains and minutiae of everyday life. At least Sherrinford does not expect perfection from his sons, leavened as he is by a certain cynicism about the frailty of men. Mycroft, self-righteous with all the newly minted knowledge of adolescence, can’t bring himself to have the same humanity; he is far too close to childishness himself to have any respect for it.

Sherlock, of course, is too young to understand this at the time; he merely knows that he wants to please his clever, witty, enlightened brother and perpetually fails. So much for family.

Nor are the long-desired classes themselves the untrammeled joy Sherlock had hoped for. So much of what there is to learn he knew already, to his private irritation - was his father more intelligent than given credit for? But it is different, and if most of the children ignore him he is too busy observing to mind. It is the first time he has been able to study masses of other people, strangers, at length, and he finds it an all-absorbing quest. They tell unspoken stories under their crude and boisterous attempts to communicate, cue each other in ways he cannot pretend to understand but wishes to. He studies the behaviour of his fellow students with more dedication than he does his textbooks; words are silent, people are living. 

With an instinct born half of shared sympathy and half from that calculating posture he can mimic so well now - he knows it is not in him to be a popular school darling even if he so desired, and refuses to be one of the taggers-on - he deliberately befriends the other unnatural soul in his class. The scholarship boy is new to the district, indeed the country. James Moriarty’s Irish accent, strong and not a little reminiscent of sing-song, would mark him off from the other children even if he didn’t use it for the wry, mocking commentary that becomes his trademark. It’s that which first brings the boy to Sherlock’s attention; the soft, sibilant, jesting tones he uses are too old for a child their age, too knowing, and therefore of greater interest than more predictable classmates. He can stop adults cold and uncertain with that quick tongue, and though he has less fortune fighting off less discerning playground attackers, who seek to end insulting repartee with brute force, they can stifle him only temporarily. 

Sherlock’s interference in the attendant socialisation rituals seem to do little positive good - now it is two boys to be hounded in and out of classes, instead of one. They do have their intended effect, however; once Moriarty is convinced by experience that no amount of harassment nor namecalling will dissuade the serious youngster to abandon his self-imposed chivalry, they become sworn friends in short order. He and Sherlock bond over calling each other by their surnames, a courtesy none of their peers will extend. Sherlock finds his Christian name even more unbearably twee than his storied surname, whereas James resents the anonymous plainness of his own (he’ll compromise on “Jim” if need be, but answer to James he will not) and argues that there is by contrast a classy, worldly-wise air about “Moriarty”.

The next step is when they begin to hide together at noon, because even reckoning without classmates Moriarty prefers eating alone and Sherlock is overwhelmed by fellow youngsters’ high-spirits often enough to appreciate the rest. They share their lunches together, seeking to liven stodgy fare with the frisson of novelty. Sherlock is usually provided with roast beef sandwiches, on the heavy homemade bread their cook prepares every other day, an apple and a tart to finish. Moriarty invariably brings a jacket potato, with a wedge of cheese tucked in the crack. 

"Can’t complain, of course. It’s usually the best meal of the day. Da thinks it’s worth putting on an effect for other people, but see if he can be bothered the rest of the time."  
"Then what do you have for tea?"

"Oh, a bit of this and that. Nothing at all, some nights."

Sherlock is stunned, with all the abrupt, dizzying empathy of youth; his father may not be kind, but they’ve never suffered for lack of food at home, not with all the ready produce of the estate right at hand. Their cook is irritable, taciturn and unimaginative but those dishes she does prepare are well enough, and the pantry and larder are always kept well-stocked. He barely knows what it is to be hungry.

Moriarty grins at the horror he’s inspired, mischief suddenly alight in his eyes. Even here alone, the older boy (by three months, two days, and Sherlock will never be permitted to forget it, any more than he could his own brother’s age) can’t resist an effect, putting on a show even for the person with whom he is most willing to lower his defenses.

"That’s not right. Do you…why don’t you take my apple, today?" Sherlock knows as he proffers the fruit that that’s the wrong move, but the information has thrown him off badly. Old as he is in many ways, he is very much still a child. It exasperates him often, the easy errors of logic he falls into through simply not having the experience or knowledge about the world to avoid.

"Oh, you act as if it’s such an unnatural fate. Not everyone is set up as nicely as your family." Moriarty takes the apple and tosses it up in the air, allowing the tip of his tongue to slide out in concentration as he throws it higher and higher - one, two, three feet. But with no sign of actually eating it. Something in Sherlock is very much upset by the spectacle, while something else is intrigued.

"I can’t help it. It’s not as though I picked my father."

There is always a safe topic. They have spent many happy hours complaining of the slights and pains, real and imagined, that their fathers have inflicted upon them. Moriarty nods in acknowledgement, catches the apple one-handed and dangles it by the stem.

"It’s not even that hard, you know. You try it. I’ll take your lunch, you take mine, see what you make of it."

It’s odd, Sherlock will think but only long afterwards, how quickly the dynamic shifted; he can’t help but admire the sheer elegance at play. Moriarty moving effortlessly from recipient of unwanted charity to absolute master of the situation. At the time he simply registers that the behaviour is not that far off from the bullying they experience from others, but training has taught him not to expect too much kindness from anyone and he can’t bring himself to mind. Besides, if this is the only way that Moriarty can be persuaded to take the food, so be it. 

He is hungry all afternoon, but the sacrifice seems more than worth it.

 

"Is that Moriarty boy stealing your lunch?" his brother asks him out of the blue, a week or two later.

They are sitting in the manor’s cavernous kitchen, watching the cook preparing beef gravy and a doughy slab of pudding. Sherlock is gulping down a post-school snack, quelling unfamiliar hunger with lashings of buttery jam-topped scones. Mycroft reaches out and takes one without asking. He pairs it with his own afternoon cup of coffee.

"What makes you say that?"

"I was asking after you the other day, but you’re never to be found with the other children these days. Seems that you were a touch busy?"

It was Carl Powers who told, Sherlock guesses; one of the more persistent of their tormentors, who has lately taken it upon himself to intrude upon their private lunches. Thus far they’ve largely succeeded in avoiding the boy, by ducking out and joining the crowds, or racing ahead to the classroom ahead of schedule. He must have found their latest safe space, the little slanted room at the top of the school’s small bell-tower, and retreated unseen. They will have to move on somewhere else tomorrow - the cellars, perhaps, or high in that oak Moriarty has been planning to climb. 

Mycroft knows his school inside out and loves learning things; no surprise he has been keeping an eye out unobtrusively. Up to now his brother’s surveillance has seemed tedious but inevitable to Sherlock; now it angers him enough to question.

"Perhaps I don’t like you checking up and watching me all the time," he says. There is this to his advantage; it is not a matter with which Mycroft will concern father. Sherrinford is very much of the opinion that schoolboys should be left to work out their own difficulties.

"It’s useful, though. Sometimes life-saving. You remember the time I caught you trying to jump off the roof?"

Sherlock rolls his eyes; he had crafted a set of wings out of chicken feathers and wire that he wished to test, and after years of having the story brought up whenever he has erred he is more than tired of it. “I’m not still four, and what I do with friends is our business.”

"But not when you’re getting into trouble. Which you have been, haven’t you? I told you to let me know if you were being bullied, I can do something about that. Trust me to pull the strings if you need."

That would be worse than useless, but then Mycroft has never been a younger sibling to ponder receiving such aid. Sherlock takes refuge in the schoolboy’s traditional silence. 

“Then I’m not. So there.”

"Sherlock. I know you’re lying."

It has only been in the last month that he has come across the word “irony,” but Sherlock grasped the concept immediately. There is a delicious sort of ring to it - does Mycroft know that his brother is in more danger from the boy he has sent spying than the one he has accused? Would it make a difference if he did? Sherlock doubts it, somehow.

"Maybe I swap lunches with him because I like what he has and he has what I like. Maybe I don’t need to be as heavy as you are, either." That’s a telling blow; Sherlock has no interest in his brother’s weight, but knows it is a sensitive point. The older boy flushes.

"How dare you speak to me that way," Mycroft says, but slowly, and they both know who has won this battle. "All right, I wash my hands of it. Go ahead and starve if you like. I’m sure father won’t care if you don’t come home with too many bruises."

"How would he know the difference between his and other people’s?" It is a stupid question even by way of sarcasm, he realises; even the most dim-witted of fathers would be able to distinguish the marks of a hazel switch and a black eye from a fellow student’s fist. A bit of observation that requires no deduction. Mycroft does not dignify it with a response.

"And tell that young Moriarty that he should wash up more frequently. If you’re going to associate with him, he could at least look less disreputable."

Sherlock shrugs and attacks his scones anew. The cream and jam taste so much better, now he has a real appetite for them.

 

There comes a day Moriarty spends studiously avoiding Sherlock, deliberately making himself scarce at lunch. Sherlock finds himself distraught, once he is stricken by the idea of having somehow upset the other boy. It has not occurred him before how fond he has become; their enforced companionship has turned into a friendship that he can’t think of relinquishing without feeling sick. He chides himself for imaginary insults, wonders what he could do by way of amendation. 

At least part of Moriarty’s evident distress makes itself noticeable in the last hour of classes, when his stomach betrays its emptiness with growls and grumbles, is positively roaring by the time the bell rings. More than one of the children laugh, and even their elderly matron allows herself a dry chuckle as she sees them out, pats the boy on the head and tells him to eat more porridge. Moriarty ignores her with resolute disdain.

Sherlock corners him next and asks - not what was happening, that would be impolite, but simply why they’ve missed their planned noon expedition of sailing newspaper boats in the school pond. A very little portion of him is simply distressed about the little pink craft he fashioned with much ado from a stolen page of Mycroft’s “Financial Times”. It is a very cunning design he is sure could beat all comers. 

“Didn’t have a lunch to bring. Da’s lost his job at the quarry.” Moriarty says, clenching his fists. “Quarreling again, knocked seven bells out of the foreman. It wouldn’t be so bad even if he’d drink and give people something to blame the fights on, but he’s proud of being sober. About the only thing he does have to be proud of.”

"I could ask my father whether he needs another labourer," Sherlock says. It’s a safe guess the answer is yes; no one endures the stifling atmosphere of the Holmes estate for long if they can find anywhere else to be. He is not the only one to feel the effects of his father’s obsessions, his brother’s contempt. Indeed, the thought occurs to him that the offer is at least a mixed blessing, but he is already launched into explanations by then, and besides, proper meals are more important for Moriarty than words and atmosphere. They tolerate quite a lot of the latter already.

It takes a long time to persuade Moriarty that the offer is serious, that anyone might want to employ his father ever again - they have moved, often, for this very failing - and in his heart of hearts Sherlock does not know that it will work. But they walk out together to the caravan where father and son live, currently parked just half a mile down the road, ignoring Mycroft’s infallible nosing out of his younger brother’s activities. The main point is to have their plan be a fait accomplai by the time the older brother works out what is going on. Sherlock trusts if they can get in first, Sherrinford will take it from there; his father is not used to having decisions questioned once made and will not take kindly to interference from his son on the running of the farm.

James Snr, as described by his son, seems to have been either hugely indifferent or sullenly dispirited for most of his life, never having enjoyed any luck or expectation of any. Initially he is as reluctant to listen as his son was. But as Sherlock describes his own father’s continual need for workers, balancing his brash young enthusiasm with due timidity as appropriate, making the situation more comfortable (if Mycroft is anything to go by, he has perhaps five more years of being an adorable youngster, which is a pity as it has its uses), he comes to the conclusion that the man can’t be all bad. Instinct tells him this is a restful place.

The living space is tiny but shows signs of love and attention, ingenious little contrivances like the lattice door on the bookcase that protects tomes during transit, the way the two hammocks are pinned to the wall out of the way during the day. There’s a bit of rubber hosing that flows down from a water tank rigged up on the ceiling (made out of a keg, ironically enough), providing the small sink with water pressure. For one used to as large a house as Sherlock, there is an admirably cosy effect to it all; he suddenly knows much better what would inspire the Toad in “Wind in the Willows” to abandon his own ancestrally-held mansion for wild trips down the roads.

"So you see, my father’s a bit…peculiar. We have trouble getting help out there. It’d be a favour."

"Tell me, then. I’m a strict teetotaler, and I don’t care for the sight of men making fools of themselves with alcohol. Does anyone on this estate of yours drink?"

Sherlock crosses his fingers, thinking of the cellar filled with cowslip and dandelion wine that their groom patiently brews in her odd moments. They haven’t the money to restore the old brewery, with vats long since rusted out, so there isn’t that outrage at least. “Not often. Usually only medicinally.”

"Medicinally? That’s an excuse no one’s used since the Great War broke out." He peers down his nose at the small boy in front of him with not a little puzzlement. "Are you real or some lost little fragment of the Victorians? Maybe we all are. Landed gentry and Irish navvies! Humph."

"As I said, sir, he is very old-fashioned…" Sherlock presses. "If you’d consider it, we’d be very much obliged."

"Well. James, did you put him up to this?"

"No," Moriarty says mulishly; he has clambered up onto the counter and is rifling through a much-loved copy of "A General History of the Pyrates" distancing himself from the conversation. "It’s impossible to tell him anything, because he’s probably found it out already by the time you’ve thought to tell him. But he does usually know what he’s talking about. You might listen."

Eventually the man is persuaded to at least give it a chance, and parks the caravan in a grassy nook not far from the house. James Snr goes inside and the meeting turns out well; the two men have more in common than their sons had dared to guess, and come to an agreement soon enough for the Moriartys to join them for supper - the cook complains but throws a few more potatoes in the pot and all is well. The two men quarrel continually but amicably, and the Holmes estate accepts a few more lost wanderers with ease.

Soon enough the spring term finally ends, and for all the tasks there are to be done there is still time to be had enjoying the summer. Moriarty and Holmes spend every waking moment together, content in their newly secure companionship. They fish on the river, take huge picnics out alone - the cook takes a liking to the thin Irish boy and on the quiet promises Sherlock to help feed him up.

It’s eye-opening, seeing his friend effortlessly charm the estate’s handful of inhabitants. Sherlock is at once both pleased and a little jealous, not so much because they like Moriarty more than they do him (not that he can exclude such a motive from his thoughts, when he is being truthful) but because in a way he appreciated the feeling of protectiveness, looking after someone without any recourse. Here there is no such need, with everyone more than happy to coddle the dryly-amusing youngster. But it has a good effect on Moriarty, visibly relaxing in his new environment. That makes up for much.

They tend to the cows, they weed the gardens, they go running across the fields, they do everything together. For months Sherlock has longed to show off his beehives, and the effect when they see them together is all he could have hoped for; Moriarty is delighted by the hives, allowing the small fuzzy bees to investigate his hands and arms with the calm air of one well-suited for apiculture. It is Sherlock who receives a sting, through excitable carelessness, and they mourn for the bee that consequently perishes. But they have collected the comb by then, and there is honey for tea that night. 

 

Nothing untoward happens for seventeen days. 

 

Sherlock thinks afterwards, they were the best of his life. 

The only unhappy person on the estate is Mycroft, who has finally broached the subject of his going away. Sherrinford won’t hear of plans for Oxford, despite recommendations from teachers and a mooted scholarship. He has a certain regard for such bastions of tradition and was willing enough until Mycroft let slip his ambitions of higher things, offices and government work to be done far away - in short, everything and anything away from the estate. 

Regarding Sherlock, his father has never had any illusions - Sherlock has always, always insisted he was leaving since becoming old enough to know what cities were - but Mycroft’s late and unexpected defection comes as a blow. The man who has been nurturing his lands all this time, fondly expecting a caretaker of his blood will take over their preservation one day, finds himself shorn of his hopes in a cut no less painful for its unexpectedness.

Sherlock finds himself enjoying it as a disinterested spectator; the scenes between his father and brother are dramatic stuff, full as good as any radio soap opera, and he can’t but feel an underlying frisson of satisfaction at their mutual discord. He has never seen Mycroft ruffled before - they all three have their poses, and Mycroft polished his long since. To see his brother pleading, shouting, sobbing, is heady new stuff. Not a proper way to regard one’s brother, he knows.

The last night, Mycroft stalks out of his father’s study in defeat and slams the door. He boxes Sherlock on the ear for lining that offending organ up with the keyhole, a thing he has never done before - Sherrinford reserves that privilege for himself.

"Nothing’ll teach you not to listen at doors, will it? Well, I tell you what; if I’m staying on here, there’s one consolation, I’ll be able to make certain you’re brought up halfway sensibly, at any rate. Maybe father wasn’t so wrong about not sending you to school for years, if it’s teaching you to associate with common boys like that Moriarty you chum around with so."

Sherlock understands immediately: he will become Mycroft’s project. All that frustrated ambition, misanthropic disgust with all-too-human errors, the drive to rationalise and organise everything, poured into the ruthless education of one fragile youth. He knows and does not know his brother, can all too easily imagine this plan adopted with no idea of exaggeration to lighten the picture. Nothing so trusting as his belief, the implicit faith of a child, controlled helplessly by the lightest whims of the older and more experience, merely because they are older and more experienced. If Mycroft does not go to university his life will turn even more suffocating. And to lose Moriarty now? Unthinkable, surely. Nothing can happen there at least as long as his father retains James Snr. 

Yet the prospect still worries him.

Because he is still young, it troubles him for an hour or two and is then buried, hidden away under the ebb and flow of normal life. There is no good borrowing trouble. Besides, once he and Moriarty burn out the copper-bottomed saucepan making syrupy toffee there are other things to think about. 

 

The next day, Carl Powers comes to the estate with his father, who has taken the long drive from the valleys to ask about enrolling their cows in a prize agriculture show that autumn. Mycroft invited them up, and sends Carl out to go play with the two youngsters. Sherlock finds this all out later, long after the information has ceased to be relevant. 

The first they know of his presence is when he and Moriary are lying side by side at the riverside again, discussing what they will do when they are old enough to run away. Both plan to leave Yorkshire for good. Moriarty says he has unfinished business back in Dublin, and laughs at himself, as though it’s a private joke.

"And you, Holmes? Still London?"

"The biggest, most bustling neighbourhood I can find. And I’ll get a job watching people, just seeing how they behave, how they act. There must be some profession like that. I’ll be the best at it."

"You’re sure of yourself, aren’t you? Never mind," Moriarty says. "I’ll come and visit you."

He rolls over and brushes Sherlock’s lips with his own. The sensation is one they experimented with last week, and it is still very new to them. They have both deemed it worthy of further study. 

The serene silence is broken by the sound of a boy making rude, smacking noises, a scatalogical parody.

"So that’s what the two of you are doing up here! I must say, I’d never have thought it. You two are so boring!"

Sherlock and James break wildly apart, each huddled alone on the muddy banks. They do not need to be told that they have been committing an unthinkable crime, that their sin is unforgiveable to a hard-line Catholic exile and an unflinching Yorkshire farmer. No matter that it has gone no farther than a few questioning kisses. They are at the mercy of their tormentor and he knows it.

Carl laughs, with the bright enthusiasm of a child who has been gifted a new, breakable toy.  
"Fancy the kind of trouble you two could get into now. It’s illegal, you know. Perverts. Maybe I should make you pay some protection money? You’d know about that, Jim, or at least your father would." He kicks over the picnic basket, nudges a cheese with his toe, grinds their lunches into the mud. "I bet he’d love to hear this."

Sherlock doesn’t even try to pretend justifying the act to himself afterwards as a fit of passion, incoherent as his thoughts are, because it isn’t truly about poor Carl Powers at all. The boy is merely the victim in the path of all the rage Sherlock has carried in his young life, and now channels outwards with a ferocity that ought to astonish him but does not. The anger and terror at his father’s beatings, the unlivable knowledge that his only friend is a handshake and a quarrel away from starving again, the sensation that Mycroft is choking him by proxy, the one truly inescapable force who, if it cannot get what it wants, will suffocate the life out of anyone near in empathic revenge on the world. One corner of Sherlock’s heart is solely concerned with the appalling consequences Moriarty will suffer when James Snr finds out what they have done, and he does not know whether this is the most altruistic part or that which finally drives him to murder. 

No, he cannot think that such anger was directed against foolish, bullying Carl, and so Sherlock believes it must have been his deliberate choice. His mind coolly tells him that the river is the place to commit the act, where the blood will flow away and there can be no fingerprints, and so he grabs Carl and pushes the boy’s head beneath. It bubbles for a time, then is still. Done. Fini. 

Only there are marks on Carl’s neck, and his clothing is soaked; there is no way he can make it back to his room and change, and even if he did Mycroft would remember, and the brain that he prides himself on being sane is suddenly wild and panicking, though a core of cool abstract remains at his center. At heart he almost welcomes the thought of prison; there are people there, there would be a new and different library, it means ten years not spent suffering in silent Yorkshire. He could imagine a worse fate. If not for Moriarty, he could bring himself to go and admit the crime quietly.

"What do I do?" he asks the other boy.

Moriarty is still sprawled in the mud, has watched the entire scene without lifting a finger to help, but also without flinching, without a move or a gesture of disgust. As is so often the case, his expression is unreadable; Sherlock has never longed so much to know what another being is thinking.

"D’you trust me, Sherlock?" He digs in the riverbank, pulls out a stone both wide and heavy.

"Always. Yes."

"Stand still then. Keep your mouth shut when they ask you questions, say you don’t remember, don’t get into trouble without me ever again. Tell me you love me." His tone is cool and business-like; no time for frivolous bypaths of language now.

"Y-yes," Sherlock says.

"Say it again, louder."

"I love you."

Moriarty nods, once, and bashes him over the head with the rock.

When Sherlock comes to again it is weeks later, in a hospital bed; the nurses refuse to discuss anything real, so as not to make him suffer reliving traumatic memories. He suffers more for lack of information than anything else.

Eventually he learns that Moriarty has long since confessed to the crime and been imprisoned for it; there is no question about his sentencing but he claimed it to be self-defense, after the victim flung a stone at Sherlock’s head, and the court shows mercy. The police officers are kind when they visit; they say that they have kept their eye on Carl for a long time, who was almost but not quite too young to be a young offender. Sherlock cannot help but wonder if Mycroft knew that as well, whether previous offenses were used to control Carl or instigated for that very purpose.

He cannot ask Mycroft personally, because the elder brother has fled Yorkshire for southern universities. Sherrinford, distraught over the attack, has given over his heir and has been waiting after news of his young son ever since. The shock of the almost-loss seems to have instilled some much needed milk of human kindness; Sherlock has an inkling that his life will be, if not easy, at least more tolerable from now on. As, indeed, it is. But the peaceful country existence he experiences from then on isn’t everything.

The only thing he can do is, not forget, but let slip the memory of that day, take the knowledge of what he is capable of into his thoughts without allowing it to dominate them. There will have been no purpose to his friend’s sacrifice if he allows himself to be driven mad.

 

Twelve years later, Sherlock is settled in London for good, thin as a lathe and high on heroin, counting the days. He has been using his new profession of consulting detective as a cover for something far more dangerous: trying to trace his brother’s footsteps. Mycroft has been busy in the years since breaking with their father and has insinuated himself into government workings with a deplorable energy. He sits motionless, like the spider in the centre of its webs, agents numerous and splendidly organised. Sherlock intends to devote his energy to exposing and breaking up the central power he has deduced.

Twenty-four hours before his date of release, James Moriarty vanishes from the prison where he was being held. Every television channel in the nation, each radio, is abruptly taken up with one single question and a picture, four words repeating incessantly over and over.

“Did you miss me? Did you miss me?”

In the sitting room of the newly-acquired flat, Sherlock clenches a leaf of sheet music in his fist. This is not what he had planned. Now Mycroft will be on to them too soon, will take discreet moves against their reconciliation, uncertain how this new factor will affect his plans. It is an open question which brother will find Moriarty.

He rebukes himself for the thought. Surely he will be first. He must.

“Yes.”

The whisper seems to glide out of the window, disappearing into the silken-black night.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone on my Tumblr feed incautiously suggested an AU contest, which is where the trouble started. I have an incorrigible knack for AUs. 
> 
> More specifically, I’d had an idea for a while about reimporting people’s parodies-homages of Sherlock back into Sherlock fan spaces. Such as, say, the interpretation of the Doctor/Master backstory, which was taken apart and put together again in this Big Finish audio by Joe Lidster, “Master”. The basic plot of which – let’s have the basic question of who the evil one is in this relationship completely upended by a last act revelation about their childhood – fit weirdly well with William S. Baring-Gould’s theories about Doyle!Sherlock’s childhood (hence Yorkshire. I know that Baring-Gould went with Siger for the pater’s name, but my version of Holmes’ father is not remotely Norwegian, so I went for the other obvious possibility). I borrowed a title and the general idea of romping about on a country estate from the John Simm Master in the current Doctor Who. The French connection’s from Doyle too. 
> 
> But what defined everything and made it fall into place was returning to that Arthur Conan Doyle quote about the countryside (this is a flipped version of “The Adventure of the White Hart” in various ways), which when I went back and checked proved to be juxtaposed with dark hints about child abuse. Sherrinford came together very quickly after that, once I’d allowed for the general implausibility of a old landed squire in more-or-less modern Britain. I didn’t, when it came to it, have the heart to actually write a character that was as violent as the one from Doyle, when you get right down to it (not that there was much need to at that; corporeal punishment is still perfectly legal in the UK, so Sherrinford could probably get away with everything that happens in this story). James Snr’s characterisation came simply from a horror of being too, too obvious about a generic Irishman. 
> 
> After that it was just a matter of building up to the climax. I was mildly surprised by how Mycroft turned out; he’s never entirely trustworthy in my stories but far less so here than in any other I’ve yet done...


End file.
